3 Questions with Lyn Li Che
LYN LI CHE is from Malaysia. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Copper Nickel, Passages North, Sixth Finch, Los Angeles Review, the Best American Poetry blog, and others. She lives in New York City.
Associate Editor Jade Rose talks with Lyn Li Che about her work in Issue 77
I love your use of imagery throughout the poem to tell the story. What inspired your poem “Trash Room Confession”? What is the story behind it?
This poem came out of a workshop with Jon Sands. The prompt was to lean on the power of the image -- not to have an agenda per se, but to trust that the image would lead you to the poem. I've long been intrigued by the idea of "garbage". It's crazy isn't it, how things like cherry stems, fishskin, twist ties, telephone parts -- plastic and flesh and paper, things that once brimmed with life and promise -- could end up together as illogical bedfellows at the end of their "usable" life. The core image for me was the peachstone; once I chose it, the other images started coming together for me and the emotion did too. With the images in place, I thought they could be an interesting way to explore the ebbs and flows of a relationship.
I am very fascinated by people’s writing processes and what goes into each writer’s individual process. Can you describe to us what a typical day writing looks like for you? What do you need to write and what makes it harder for you to write?
I confess: I find it very hard to come to the page without the external pressure of a workshop or a deadline. It's not that I don't want to write, it's that the subject matter I'm writing requires me delving into some pretty painful stuff and I'm not always in the right frame of mind to approach it. I'd say that a "typical" day for me would be meeting up with some writing friends at a café or the library (the friend element is important for accountability). I often start by reading a few poems to get inspired: I currently have Linda Gregg's "All of It Singing" and Megan Pinto's "Saints of Little Faith" in my bookbag. Then it's off to the races! I use Notion to write: it's a great way to manage drafts and to help me focus on the actual writing, instead of fussing about margins and fonts (side note: when I wrote in Gdocs or Word, I had a tendency to gravitate towards Garamond, which I felt imbued my writing with more gravitas than it may actually have had). I also have a Notion page where I save random ideas on the go that I sometimes mine for inspiration. I like to try and timebox my writing to about an hour or two; depending on how I'm feeling about the piece, I'll give it a day or two and come back to it for edits or put it into my ongoing "slush pile". In sum: extrinsic motivation tempered by accountability, consistency and ritual, because the latter items take the pressure off and make it easier to come to the page.
Is there anything you would like to share about your poem “Trash Room Confession” that we don’t know?
This poem is from a longer series of sonnets that interrogates how one gives love, accepts love and views themselves as being worthy of love in the wake of sexual violence. I've tried and failed to tackle this subject many times, but writing in the sonnet form really unlocked something for me. The idea to use the sonnet initially came from a workshop I was taking with Richie Hoffman. Putting my words into the sonnet form -- with its constraints, rhymes, propulsive motion -- made me feel like I was writing into and against a broader tradition and helped me envision a broader series. I'm still very far from being done with the series, but my hope is to eventually build a larger manuscript around it!